Page six above also looks very nice, probably because it is the result of strong Kirby layouts finished by a tight inker, who is probably yet another new hand. It looks to be neither Kirby, Simon nor the Eisner stylist, and the shading is distinct in that the inker uses masses of parallel lines to suggest shadows, as in panels three and four. The drawing of Lenny lifting Bucky out of the panel is particularly cool. One of the features that stands out is the inker’s distinctive rendering of hands that curl slightly at the fingertips.

Now we come to the page above that is almost certainly partially finished by Reed Crandall’s line. Page seven is beautifully laid out, and it is probably Kirby’s baby. It has a wonderful flow from start to finish, beginning with Steve Rogers’ three-in-one blow starting a curve that moves through the pile of thugs in panel two and diagonally down to the speeding Rogers racing along the wall in three. In the final tier, Rogers ducks behind a gorilla and emerges as the stalking panther-like Captain America. Sadly, the ink lines are so finely drawn that the poor reproduction deprives us of much of their beauty.

Page eight above gives us a smashing dynamic Kirby layout, with that heavy-handed shading ink style again, which contrasts with the deft lightness of the inking on the previous page.We also see that peculiar treatment of fingers here again. Cap’s figure in panel one is very tastefully rendered and Lenny’s head is nicely done as well, but in panel two, we see a bizarre wood cut like cross-hatching on Lenny’s face and the heavy lank hair looking almost like an Albrecht Durer etching. Lenny’s torso in panels one, three, six and seven has that bizarre parallel shading, but nothing here detracts from the spectacle of Kirby unleashed, especially when the page contains panels like five, with the wonderful whip cord figure of Cap delivering a roundhouse right.

It’s downhill from there, as the next page is again a bit of a rush/hack job, that starts out with some promise in the first four panels and then falls apart in the final three. Cap’s figure is particularly strong in panel three, but the inking is fairly unremarkable. Skipping page ten, which shows even more diverse inkers, we come to the final page, which is even more peculiar in that the faces of the characters make me think of artist Mac Raboy. It is probably not he, but there you go. That is the nature of this bizarre hodge-podge of a comic series.